


The Life of Stones in the Sun

by unreadlibrary



Category: The Searchers (1956)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pining, Romance, Western, attempted to write this as something you could pick up even if you haven't watched the movie, but don't expect a summary, i have been thinking about Martin hugging Debbie in the tent scene for years, probably didn't succeed at the summary anyway, this is how it actually happened after the movie you can't convince me otherwise, watch the movie instead cause it's beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreadlibrary/pseuds/unreadlibrary
Summary: Martin Pawley wasn’t quite a Cherokee; Deborah Edwards wasn’t quite his cousin.
Relationships: Martin Pawley/Debbie Edwards, Martin Pawley/Laurie Jorgensen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Life of Stones in the Sun

* * *

> _ Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” _
> 
> _“Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.”_

* * *

Ethan Edwards’ niece was eight-years-old when she was kidnapped by Injuns. 

Back before the search for little Debbie Edwards began, Martin had only ever thought of Ethan Edwards as what he was: a hero. Ethan Edwards was the man that had found Martin, just a boy, after his folks were massacred. Ethan had spent eight years away, fighting wars, and came back only to fight a personal one. 

“You could be mistaken for a half-breed,” Those were Ethan’s first words to him, when he came back that day. Debbie Edwards was eight-years-old. Martin Pawley was a full-grown-man, nineteen, an age where it’s impossible not to want to please somebody. Especially a man whose face was clearer in Martin’s mind that even his own father’s. 

Ethan Edwards’ niece was eight-years-old when Ethan came back after an eight-year absence. Martin Pawley thinks about that now, when all is said and done. Now that little Debbie is back. Now that Martin is set to get married. Now that Ethan is gone again. 

* * *

  
Martin wasn’t quite a Cherokee; Deborah wasn’t quite his cousin. Martin Pawley had no family but the family he had earned. He had never doubted it should be any other way. Sure, he’d repeat his lineage to anyone who asked: 1/8 Cherokee, and the rest is English and Welsh. If anybody doubted him, tried to linger over his redbone looks or dark hair, he’d keep their stare. He’d keep it so they could see how blue his eyes were. 

Ethan’s niece had the dark eyes and the dark hair, but even after a lifetime in the desert she was reassuringly rosy; all hint of who she was underneath all that sun led to metaphors of milk and sheets and bone. She was a beautiful woman. Pure. That’s what they’d call her. That’s what had made her kidnapping even more heinous. A little white girl was a squall’s wife. Not a squall’s wife anymore, though, not since the day Martin Pawley had secreted into her husband’s tent at night and she’d placed her cool hands on his back. Not since the day when Martin Pawley placed his body between Deborah and Ethan when he saw her in Injun clothes. Not since the day that Ethan had finally cornered her underneath God’s sun and lifted her up in his arms, taken her home. 

But the day Debbie comes home is the day Ethan leaves, and Martin still hasn’t forgiven him for that. He could forgive Ethan for everything else—for loving his own brother’s wife, for only loving 7/8ths of Martin Pawley——but not for being willing to die for his family and then not being willing to live with them. 

But what was all this speculation for? Guessing at other people’s secrets, that was all just the art of measuring with shadows. Martin Pawley was no careful mathematician, no thoughtful artist, no creature of the night. 

But he was a dreamer. Wasn’t he allowed to dream every now and then, as he drifted off to sleep? Dream again of that long search for a girl who became a woman when no one was looking? Long-armed, long-legged, long in looks and stories she’ll never tell. 

* * *

  
Martin Pawley wasn’t quite a Cherokee; Deborah Edwards wasn’t quite his cousin. But he’d spent half his life in the shadow of her, the child her. She was a woman now, and a widow at that, and Martin Pawley was set to be married. But Deborah is like her father in this way; it is easier for Martin to picture her face than it is for him to picture his fiancee’s. 

Laurie. Laurie, Laurie. He’d always been pulled away from her and she’d always been pulling him back. Her force was so magnetic, her presence was such a relief. It was always a relief to be wanted. It was always a thrill to be loved by her. He doesn’t even consider not marrying her. It really just seems like an inevitable thing, like only a matter of time. Is that how Martha Edwards had felt about marrying Aaron? 

* * *

  
“Martin,”

He’s remembering the past still. It’s before Ethan ever came back, back in the days when Debbie still asks him for stories and horseback rides. 

“Yes, Debbie?”

She’s got on her older sister’s hand-me-downs, and they are still too big for her. 

“What makes you different from Ben?” she asks. 

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Ben’s my brother, and you’re my brother, but Ben’s ma and pa are my ma and pa, and yours ain’t,”

“Well, we’ve grown up together. Even though Uncle Aaron and Aunt Martha aren’t my parents, they’re the ones raisin’ me. Just like they’re raisin’ you,”

“But sometimes you call me cousin and sometimes you call me sister. Ain’t they different?”

“Sure, but we’re still family,”

“Mm,”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, does that mean I can’t marry you when I’m grown up?”

“Aw, little girl, you’re gonna find somebody a lot better than me,”

It had been a childish question. Martin Pawley should have never paid it any more mind. Why, Debbie had asked the same thing of her own Pa before. It was before children understood what ‘marry’ meant.

* * *

  
Martin is stunned out his reverie when he glimpses the black body of a snake sleeping in the sun. He quietly turned back to the barn door, reached for a rifle propped up on the other side. He’d just been making a last look over the homestead before turning in for the night. The days were so long this time of year; he and Laurie were waiting till the Texas weather turned relatively reasonable before they were getting married. They were getting married the last weekend of September, and here they were in the final pangs of summer, mid-August, when you could still cook an egg on the ground if you accidentally dropped it on your way back from the coop. 

Martin’s gun was poised, but once he’d trained his eye on the snake he knew something was off. He waited, took a tentative step forward. 

It wasn’t a snake. Not anymore. It was the skin torn off a snake, the mere surface of a mystery. Martin picked up with the end of his rifle. It was a little heavy, but it billowed in the wind like an indecent piece of lady’s wear. Martin snorted. His mind was a strange place these days. Even treacherous, he’d say. Because he was thinking of Deborah again. And he’s the only one who calls her Deborah now. To everybody else it’s Debbie, Debbie, Debbie. So desperately wanting to resurrect the childhood that was taken away from her, they wouldn’t let the poor girl grow up.

With one great heave, he arcs the snake skin clear across the other side of the yard. Then he spends the rest of the evening hunting down its original owner. When he finds it, he thinks its a funny color—not nearly so black and impressive as his old skin. Martin makes sure its a quick death. Killing things always made him a little sad; it was only right to feel a little sad about a little death. 

* * *

  
By late August, Martin feels Deborah’s eyes on his back all the time. He’s not sure who started it, and when, because he’s been looking too. 

“You look like him,” she said in the cool of an evening, August 31st. 

It caught Martin Pawley completely off guard. 

“Huh?”

“Like Scar,” she said. She said it so calmly. 

Martin didn’t think he could ever get mad at her, but he’s mad at that moment. Strangely, he imagines that Ethan Edwards is back, and in his daydreams Martin punches the ever living daylights out of him. He’s about to say something he regrets when he looks into Deborah’s eyes. Her dark eyes. Her expressionless face. 

“You’re more Injun than I’ll ever be!” he says, and flies out the door. 

* * *

  
That night, as he takes a walk around the homestead to cool himself off, Martin realized that he had killed the wrong snake. A big black snake slithered out of the big black night and clean bit through Martin’s boots and socks and almost into his bloodstream. Good thing he kept a knife on his person. Burning both with shame and anger, he stabbed at the ground several times before it hit its mark.

He arrives at the cabin already sweating like a pig. His thoughts are so clouded he thinks he sees Aunt Martha haloed in the window. Her eyes on the family Bible. Her mouth is parted slightly. It’s an old memory; he can see it so clearly because he’d seen it so often growing up. But who knows, it could very well be her ghost. It could very well be his first glimpse of heaven. He’s fading now. As the silence right before unconsciousness rushes through his ears, Martin can even hear her strong clear voice through the crack in the window:

_"Barak said to her, 'If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.'_   
_“Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. 'But--'"_

Martin’s burning head thunks against the glass. Martha shifts at the slight disturbance, looks up. Only it’s not Martha, it’s Debbie.

The rest is a rush. There’s clean white skirts and bedding everywhere. Somebody takes his shoes and socks off. Somebody harnesses the horse. Somebody sucks out the poison. When he wakes up the following morning, the doctor is just getting ready to leave his bedside. Laurie is holding his hand. 

“Oh, Martin Pawley, you really know how to postpone a wedding,” she laughs and cries all at once. 

Martin squeezes her hand. She looks like a delicate girl, all blonde and trussed up, but Laurie Jorgensen had always been anything but. He feels the square shape of her knuckles, the slight calluses. She wasn’t a farmhand, her Daddy never would have allowed it, but she got her hands dirty when she thought the occasion warranted it. He’d always admired that about her. Her pig-headedness, too. Her attention is what he liked the best—whether she was cryin’ over him or chastising him or happy to see him come home. 

He feels around for her engagement ring. Well, they both knew it wasn’t much a ring. Just a placeholder. Wasn’t even real gold. 

“What are you petting me for, Martin Pawley?”

“I thought—” he said with a tongue thick from sleep and thirst, “A’where’s your ring?”

She’s slightly unfocused between the crush of his eyelashes. It’s getting harder to keep his eyes open. Even in the unfocus, he can see her blush. 

“Well, it was laundry day yesterday, so I had to take it off,” she said, “I didn’t want to lose it. Then I came over here the middle of last night,”

Martin is silent for a moment. 

“I know it’s cause it turns your skin green,”

Her hand bristles in his hand. 

He continues, “I’m savin’ up for a real ring…how much did Doc charge?”

“He said he won’t charge you a thing, not till after our honeymoon,” Laurie told him in a clipped, satisfied tone. She had probably struck that deal with Doc herself. 

“Alright, alright,” Martin is drifting out again. His thoughts were never very clear to begin with. The last thing he asks, and he asks because he thinks he’s in the safety of his dreams again, is, “Where’s Deborah at anyway?”

* * *

  
Martin Pawley didn’t count on being out for more than a week, so he was surprised when two weeks later he found himself retching into the bushes and forced back into quarantine. He insists the wedding won’t need to be delayed. But the days don’t get any cooler, and he can’t keep his food down; he was starting to look like a scarecrow. 

Laurie was there everyday, never a hair out of place, though there were crow’s feet around her eyes. The whole place felt picked over by crows, like the remains of any normalcy and happiness were just a carrion feast. Every day, he’s getting bluer. Feels like a sickness. Feels like Ethan is here, like his hateful lonely poetry never left. 

Martin didn’t see much of Deborah during that time. She’d taken to wearing white since she came back. Laurie complained more than once that between the white skirts and the silence she felt like the place was haunted. She’d always laugh about it, but it put Martin in a sulking frame of mind. 

When he dreams, which is often, he dreams of an endless chase. The buttes rise up around him and thrash and lift like rearing horses, breaking against a sky the color of a churning sea, with all the clouds swirling around in the blue. He hears thunder, but there’s no rain. It’s just the sound of angry voices and stampedes. And Martin isn’t Martin—he’s shirtless and wild and shining with sweat and he’s got feathers in his hair, or whatever it is that Cherokees wear. Or maybe he’s Comanche. Apache. Shoshone.

“—Nokoni,”

The sound came from outside his dreams. Martin wakes up to the sight of a lantern in the dark, the feel of sweat pooling on his chest. He kicks back the quilts but the air is still stifling. In the dim light, he sees a red face. It’s just red from reflecting the red flames of the lantern. It’s a squall’s face. It’s an angel’s face. It’s little Debbie. It’s some woman he doesn’t recognize. 

“What are you saying to me?” he whispers. 

Deborah leans closer. 

“Nokoni,” she said, “You kept saying it in your sleep,”

“I don’t even know what that means,”

“You must have heard it on your travels,”

Martin wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Maybe.”

“I know what it means.”

“Hm.”

“It means to go someplace and return. You must have been dreaming of a journey,”

“I must be stir crazy, is what I am,”

“Martin—” She cuts herself off. 

Now he looks at her, remembering that the last time they spoke he had said things he regretted. He reached for her hand and she let him take it. 

She changed what she was going to say, “Your hands were always so big,”

She brought her other hand to clasp around his. Now it was her hands that felt big. Martin swallowed a lump in his throat.

“This is how I prayed to you,” Deborah said, her face still tilted downward, “I’d clasp my hands around Topusana’s hands when she held mine. Topusana was Scar’s first wife. She was always kind to me. I don’t know why. But she’d be speakin’ to me, and I couldn’t understand her, and I just prayed. I prayed to God, and to Jesus, and, and I knew Pa and Ben were dead, and I couldn’t see how Uncle Ethan was the prayin’ kind, so I prayed to you. I prayed to you the most,”

“Deborah,”

“Everybody else calls me Debbie,”

“Do you want me to?”

“No, I like that you treat me different. Am I, Martin? Am I different to you? Or am I too different now?”

He let go of her hands, but compared their skin side by side. 

“You’re different alright. That’s not a bad thing. Y’know, I always wanted skin like yours,”

She smiled, “I always wanted skin like yours,”

“Like mine? Ha! You were a right tomboy, but you still acted pretty. You’re the prettiest girl around, Deborah, you’ll recover just fine,”

“Oh, Martin,”

He looked up from their hands, which had become intertwined again. He thought he’d look up to find her crying, but no, she had that sadness in her eyes that all Injun women had. Controlled, a dam for a river. It didn’t mean the river wasn’t there. Their women cried like their men—in the throes of death or not at all. 

“Nobody’s gonna marry me now,” she said. 

“Do you wanna be married?”

“No, not especially. But, I’ve thought about it,”

Even her voice was stony. It made Martin want to soften her. He leaned in to kiss her like a brother. Sometimes even Aunt Martha would kiss her children dryly on the mouth, coming in after a long day. It happened in the spur of the moment, an unfussy amount of attention. 

But it wasn’t a family kiss, and halfway in he knew it wouldn’t be. She knew to open her mouth, for one. He gets to the inside of her bottom lip before he stops. Pulling away from her completely is painful, so he brings his hand to the back of her neck and leans their foreheads together. 

“We ought to get back to sleep, Debbie,” he said. 

“Deborah,” she said, with a set in her jaw. 

Martin shook his head, mussing up the hair on her brow. She employs one last maneuver. She snakes her arms around him and spreads her hands on his back. 

He doesn’t resist. 

“I always felt the safest with you,” she whispered, “I’m sorry for coming tonight,”

It takes him a moment to find his throat and clear it. “Why?”

She lets him go. She looks at him with a new and equally unreadable expression. 

“When you feel better, can we go on one last ride? Like we used to? And you can tell me a story?”

He’s caught off guard again and this time he laughs. “I reckon so,”

* * *

  
When Martin told Laurie he was attempting a ride the next morning and that Debbie would be accompanying him, she was very practical about it. 

“That means you’re feeling better,” she said, “And besides, we need all the men here in your absence. Little Debbie’s a strong rider. If anything happens I predict she’ll hoist you up on the horse herself,”

He knew he kissed Laurie out of pure gratitude and admiration, but he had none of the sheen in his eyes that he saw in hers. He hoped after today he could get rid of whatever badness was in his blood that kept him from loving her completely. 

His fingers were over-eager as he saddled his horse and waited impatiently for Deborah to meet him. 

They rode out in silence. The sky was eerily like it had been in his dreams: strokes of turquoise pasted hastily on a canvas. 

They hugged tableland that gave them enough shade to ride side-by-side. Martin doesn’t know what story to tell, so he tells her his. He tells her how he and Ethan Edwards spent nearly a decade looking for little Debbie Edwards. 

They ate lunch in the saddle, some biscuits and preserves and hard cheese. Martin felt a bit feverish, mostly from being so tired, and with the sun about to hit its peak. Deborah took care of feeding the horses their grain and watering them by idling them up to some muddy puddles that had formed in-between the alley of two mesas.

“Miss Laurie has been waiting on you a long time,” Deborah said after she’d remounted her horse. 

Martin thought she was talking about how long they’d been gone that day.

“Oh, she’ll be right busy all day. She’s still planning on having the weddin’ come the weekend after next,”

“Aren’t you plannin’ on havin’ that weddin’ too?”

Martin coughed. The biscuits had dried his mouth out. He took a swig of water and wiped his forehead with his wrist. 

“Aw, little girl,” was all he said. 

Deborah gently reined her horse in. She didn’t actually use reins. While she had gotten used to riding with a saddle again, she refused to use reins on her horse. She could guide the beasts with just her knees, with just her mind, it almost seemed like. It was hard to fathom all she’d picked up from the Comanche. Sometimes she even slipped up and still referred to them as her people. 

“You know, I waited a long time for you too,” 

He stared at her. He could only see the back of her head. 

“I don’t mind sharin’ you. I’m used to sharin’,”

He looked all around him, thinking he could wander through this place his whole life and always be lost. He _**had**_ wandered through it his whole life and always felt lost. He could take Deborah with him this time. They could go someplace and never return, live the life of stones in the sun. 

“I don’t know if the thing I want the most is Laurie or not,” he finally admitted, twisting the reins gently in his hands, “But I love her,”

“I know you do,”

“And, I love you too Debbie. It’s always been easy to love you,”

Their horses circle one another, like its the beginning of a dance. Suddenly, with a jerk of her knees, Deborah is flying. On instinct, his warning yell cut short in the wind, Martin is flying right after her. 

She’s a white phantom on a nearly-white horse, but the nearliness of everything becomes a blur, and now she’s a cloud just out of reach. He’s not sure what will happen if he catches up to her. His heart pounds at the thought. Probably pick her up and carry her like a bride, he thinks. She was already dressed for it. 

Time passed, he’s not sure how much, but the sun only climbed and the air only strangled. In the midst of it, he passed out from fever, from delirium, from ecstasy, one of the three.

* * *

  
He recalls what happened next, but it’s all still out of order:

He doesn’t get married the last weekend of September. 

He feels a cool hand—Laurie’s? Debbie’s?—on his temple. There’s a glass of milk on the nightstand, a greening engagement ring. 

Laurie is so happy he’s alive she could strangle him. Laurie’s so mad she could drive a nail through his head. In the end, Laurie’s so done crying over him that she calls off the wedding herself. 

Somebody that looks like Deborah, but it can’t be, because she isn’t dressed in white. 

Somebody kisses him, chaste and dry-like, like a mother kisses her child. 

And the snake strikes again, but this time it sheds all its skins and there’s nothing left but smoke going up and up. It looks like smoke signals. It looks like the day the Edwards homestead got burned. It looks like the sky that covered Martin Pawley the day he lost his parents and found Ethan. It looks like a new dawn. 

* * *

  
By early October, the last of the fever and the poison has left Martin Pawley’s system. He leaves with his clothes in a trunk, Deborah's white and his Pinto harnessed to a wagon he buys from Mr. Jorgensen. Debbie climbs onto the front seat. 

It was only right. They couldn’t presume on the Jorgensen’s anymore. They weren’t family anymore. Martin thought Mr. Jorgensen would be angry, thought Mrs. Jorgensen might refuse to see him off. But they genuinely say they’re going to miss him. 

“It’s tough all over,” said Mr. Jorgensen, “I tried to tell Laurie that. Out there—it changes you, don’t it, son?”

Then Laurie, who’d been standing just inside the doorway, burst out of the house and wrapped Martin in her arms. She kissed his temple, stinging him. 

"Goodbye, darlin'," he whispered into her yellow hair.

She took a step back and gave him a small, hidden smile.

“Goodbye Martin Pawley,"

* * *

  
The only direction they can pick is a horizontal one. To pass the time, Martin tells stories, and asks Deborah to tell him hers.

"Tell me ones you've never told anyone. Tell me what it's like,"

They ride comfortably, arm in arm, temple to temple, and the sun eclipses them both.

**Author's Note:**

> the following lines are from Zbigniew Herbert's A Barbarian in the Garden:
> 
> 1\. the art of measuring with shadows  
> 2\. the mere surface of a mystery  
> the skin torn off a snake, the mere surface of a mystery  
> 3\. the life of stones in the sun  
>   
> the verse at the beginning is Judges 4: 8-9.  
> 


End file.
